Color representation of a display device including a liquid crystal display (LCD) or the like is based on additive color mixture, whereas color representation of a paper medium is based on subtractive color mixture. The color representation of the same color image varies between when the color image is outputted from a printing device such as a printer and when the color image is outputted on a display device. Accordingly, the output result from the printing device and the color representation which can be identified on the display device are not matched, and the user may not be able to obtain the desired result.
Further, due to characteristics specific to components included in each display device, color representation varies among display devices. Even the same display device represents colors differently depending on the setting of luminance or tone. Accordingly, there are cases where even when the same image is outputted, colors can be represented as desired by the user on one display device, whereas colors may look differently on another display device. For this reason, a color management technology for setting the display colors to the desired color representation in accordance with the settings or characteristics of each display device or unifying color representation among multiple display devices is important for the printing and design industries.
Examples of traditional color management methods include a method by which an image for adjustment is displayed on the target display device and then the user looks at the displayed image and subjectively sets color space (Patent Document 1). However, this method, in which the user manually and subjectively sets color space, increases the error resulting from the ambient environment, time, or physical condition, thereby making it difficult to unify color representation. Further, the manual work is very complicated.
Another method is to automatically set color space using an existing ICC (International Color Consortium) profile, which is created for various types of display devices. However, even if the ICC profile can absorb characteristics specific to the type of the display device, unification of color representation would be insufficient unless the ICC profile adapts to characteristics specific to each display device, as described above.
For this reason, a method of attaching an optical sensor to the display device and then executing calibration software on a personal computer (hereafter referred to as PC) connected to the display device is being used. In this method, the user specifies a target adjustment value for the display device, and the PC performs calibration so that the measured value matches the specified target adjustment value. The optical sensor is attached to the liquid crystal panel of the display device, and calibration is automatically performed without the user having to do manual work (Patent Document 2).